Teaching Diversity in the Classroom in Recent

Teaching Diversity in the Classroom

In recent decades it has become increasingly important that educators understand the importance of multicultural education. Given that society has become more pluralistic and diverse, there is a need for a curriculum that focuses on diversity. This research proposal recognizes that diversity can and should be taught, and proposes a methodology for doing so.

This project reviews the literature on teaching diversity. Achieving diversity in higher education involves a wide range of approaches. Teaching diversity includes the need to recruit and maintain a diverse student body, as well as faculty, and to provide instruction to a diverse group of students, provide an inclusive curriculum that reflects the contributions of non-Western and minority groups, and to teach so as to critically examine the humanities and the professions from perspectives of groups that have been marginalized.

The Center for Instructional Diversity in Research divides strategies for diversity in teaching into two categories: examining how one teaches as well as what one teaches (2011). Instructors can diversify a teaching style by incorporating a wider range of classroom practices that allows students options for learning and demonstrating what they have learned. Moreover, instructors can promote diversity by ensuring that course content thoroughly and accurately represents the discipline. They can employ a more diverse approach to teaching that acknowledges the learning challenges that students face, along with the wide range of possibilities for meeting those challenges.

Strategies for inclusive teaching include the need for an instructor to examine his or her own practices and assumptions on which he or she bases decisions about teaching. Research studies have found that teachers tend to interact differently with men and women students, and with students who are, or whom the instructor perceives to be, high or low achievers (Davis, 1993). Instructor self-assessment questions and surveys have been developed to promote better awareness of these perspectives. Teaching is not a one-way, linear delivery of knowledge. Rather it is an interactive process that calls for flexibility in adjusting to the input students provide, and to the contexts in which learning takes place and the evolution of content. Because all individuals do not learn in the same way, it is necessary to plan for diversity in teaching, and to monitor student progress (Center for Instructional Diversity in Research, 2008).

Vanderbilt's Center for Teaching (2011) promotes additional inclusive teaching strategies. These strategies cover a range of topics that should be addressed: fostering diversity in the classroom, promoting racial, ethnic and cultural diversity, gender issues, sexual orientation, and disabilities.

Teaching diversity also requires an approach to course organization and classroom teaching, as Winship describes. His findings are supported by published literature and interviews with faculty and other experts on the subject of teaching for diversity (Winship, 2006).